Senior living

[OneFinger]

...One of the few really smart things I did in my life, purely by accident, was to buy a small (1200 sq. feet), one story condo (in 1986) near to my work...

 

Now when the time comes that I can no longer live as I currently do I will, I hope, continue to live here and if and when necessary bring in help to assist me. I DO NOT want to move a “rest home” or move away. Frankly I will hopefully be able to finish my life in my home environment.

 

I have a similar story. When I moved to Portland in 2011, I found a 3 bedroom, 2 bath condo (1300 sf) for $75K. It has a fireplace, granite counter tops, double sinks in both baths, private deck. And it's all one level with no stairs. Best investment I ever made and that is where I'll retire. And, it's at the base of a nature park so the walking trails behind me will never be developed. Lots of trees, greenery, and wildlife / deer.

 

I have no desire to live back in my Utah home and that will become the retirement home for my sister and brother-in-law. I would love to retire in San Diego (where I currently work). But, it is way too expensive and I hate the traffic / freeways. However, I do love living in the Hillcrest "gayborhood" and the closeness of everything. I walk to the grocery store, pharmacy, doctors, etc. I just wish I had that kind of "walkability" in Portland.

[+ Charlie]

I love old people like that I remember speaking with one woman in her 100's. She lost her entire family in ww 1 and ww2, her sons and grand sons in the Vietnam and Korean war. She would tell me stories about working at IBM when the first computers came out, entire rooms of huge cabinet computers just to process a small amount of data, and look at the computers now! small hand held devices had more computing power then all of ibm back them. black and white tv, cable tv, color tv. the internet. Man on the moon? she is thankful she lived to see that. cell phones? she thought the 80s was incredible with those bricks.. now cell phones that you can put in watches! she certainly is looking forward to the future. everyday astounds her with all the leaps. She said she hopes to live long enough to see flying cars and robots.

My mother was born a few weeks after the Wright brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk. and she lived to fly on 747s to Europe many times, to see men walk on the moon, and, unfortunately, to see men fly planes into the WTC.

[Rudynate]

My mother was born a few weeks after the Wright brothers' first flight at Kitty Hawk. and she lived to fly on 747s to Europe many times, to see men walk on the moon, and, unfortunately, to see men fly planes into the WTC.

 

Family photographs that show the passage of time are fun to look at. I have a photograph of a great aunt and her husband just after they were married. Her skirt covered her ankles. In a photograph on their 50th wedding anniversary, she's wearing a dress with a skirt that stopped just below her knees.

 

I have a photograph of my grandmother as a young girl. She's wearing a lacy shirtwaist with puffy sleeves and a high neck and a little locket at her throat and her hair is on top her head in that late-victorian onion hairstyle.

 

I have another photograph of my grandfather as a young man helping his neighbor harvest his hay. It looks completely from another time. The guys are all wearing straw hats. They're all using pitch forks to load the hay, by the forkful, onto a wagon drawn by a team of horses.